How to Do a Knockout for Production in Illustrator
A knockout is a prepress technique that prohibits discoloration of overprinting objects on a printing press. For example, if your document has light-colored text over a dark-colored background, knocking out the dark background behind the text keeps the dark-colored background ink from discoloring the light-colored foreground ink. You can create knockouts in Illustrator from the Transparency panel.
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Instructions
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Open an Illustrator file containing overprinting objects you want to knock out. Do this by clicking the "File" menu and choosing "Open" to display the Open dialog box. Navigate to the file, select it and click the "Open" button.
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Select the object you want to knock out of the background. If you need to knock out several objects that overprint the same darker-colored underlying object, select all of them and knock them out as a Page Knockout Group. To select multiple objects, click the first object to select it and then click the other objects while holding down the shift key.
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Click the "Window" menu and choose "Transparency" to open the Transparency panel.
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Click the Panel Options drop-down menu in the upper-right corner of the Transparency panel and choose "Page Knockout Group" from the fly-out menu. Note that this option is named Page Knockout Group whether one or multiple objects are selected.
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Click the "File" menu and choose "Save As." Name and save the file. You can now print the document without discoloring the light-colored foreground objects.
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Tips & Warnings
When knocking out thin objects, such as small type or thin lines and borders, you should outline the objects with a .05-point outline to ensure that the objects print clearly. To create an outline around an object, select it and then right-click and choose "Create Outlines" from the popup menu.
